Monday, January 31, 2011

The 21st century has certainly witnessed a progression towards a ‘cashless society’, but social networking giant Facebook are taking things a step further, throwing their hat into the ring with the introduction of a new compulsory monetary policy that will initially govern its share of the multi-billion dollar online games industry.

Imagine a virtual world where all goods and services are to be offered, bought and paid for by a new virtual-local form of electron currency. Facebook will be piloting such a scheme for their multimillion dollar online games market. As of July 2011, every social game developer on Facebook will have to offer the social network’s “virtual currency credits”.

According to a recent news release from Marketing Week, “Over the next five months developers will have to implement credits as a payment method within their games”. The games industry already accounts for 70% of the virtual goods transactions on the site.

According to Facebook, the social networking corporation are not insisting that their new online currency will be the only payment method available to users, and in exchange for their cooperation game developers will offered incentives if they use Facebook dollars exclusively. Compensation for compliance will apparently include early access to product features and premium promotion on their site, including promotion on the games dashboard and of course, premium ‘smart’ ad targeting.

What appears on the surface to be a simple online marketing tool to help consolidate a niche market share on the world’s largest social network, has in fact much more far and reaching consequences for hundreds of millions of users. What Facebook have effectively achieved here is nothing short of a huge “game changer” in terms of envisioning a world without cash.

Foreshadowing of things to come

In 2011, it is a social reality that most people you know are, in one way or another, citizens of the Facebook Nation. The corporation’s success in capturing a near global monopoly of membership to their online platform has now given it the ability to dictate an economic mandate to both producers and consumers, in effect, controlling both the upper and lower loops of their virtual economy. This is an incredible position of power, but one which should come as no surprise to any economic student of monopolies. A severe lack of choice in the world of online communities has unwittingly(or not) positioned Facebook in the rolls of banker, retailer and governor. It is certainly a trend worth noting at this stage, and one which may one day have real consequences for its members and their various cyber passions.

By issuing its own form of “virtual currency credits”, it is essentially creating its own money supply that may one day be the defacto currency for all transactions for goods and services that fall within the borders of the social network. This puts Facebook into a position of exception economic leverage. With any new form of ‘national’ currency- in this case, it’s the Facebook National currency, also comes the possibility of fluctuation in currency exchange rates. With this centralisation of power also comes the ability and means to control and even inflate the value of its currency in terms of supply and demand. This can also reflect itself in the value of all goods and services whereby the paying online community would have no choice but to comply to any new user monetary policy decrees or changes in value imposed on producers and users. One only has to look at their recent announcement to realise that this is indeed already the case.

A Brave New World: the cashless society

As the virtual community and virtual economy begin to replace the real ones, trends forecasters and futurists can begin to imagine a world where morning newspapers are replaced by online news, local markets are replaced by online supermarkets, community fundraising events are replaced by web fundraisers, fun fairs are replaced with online games and greasy spoon cafés are replaced by internet cafés. In case you haven’t been paying attention, in so many ways- that day has already arrived. Welcome to the virtual world. As we spend more and more of our time interfacing with this new world, we will invariably be performing many more monetary transaction there too.

Aside from the obvious differences in a cashless society- a world where no notes and coins are ever physically held by the owner, there are also a number of other not so nice realities which citizens will be forced to accept. Chief among these are legitimate concerns that a cashless society would make “retailer resistance” aka choosing independent shops, buying direct or supporting local markets over mega supermarkets and national retail chain stores… nearly impossible. In addition to retailer resistance, cash ensures some level of anonymity on the part of its owner. Not so in cashless world, as electronic currency and transactions are and will always be recorded, track, analysed and in some cases- suspended.

With the introduction of a cashless society, citizens are also likely to lose their identities associated with national currencies like American Dollars, or British Sterling. But as they lose one identity, they will most certainly gain another. In this way, Facebook has taken the lead in supplying a monetary identity to its client citizens in the form of its ‘virtual currency credits’.

Perhaps one day we may also see ‘Apple Credits’ or ‘Nokia Kroner’ as mobile device transactions creep further and further into our economic routine. Either way you slice it, it is an incredible amount of power and influence which an elite clique of corporations now have over large sections of the global population.

As we have seen with the online games developers and their customers, resisting the Facebook marketplace is no longer an option, as it has already defined policy within the boundaries of its massive virtual community- even mandating what form of money can be used within the Facebook Nation. The decree is simple and clear, “if you are not in, you are out.”

Aljazeera is reporting that its sources indicate Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak will flee to Israel. It was earlier speculated that he would take refuge in Saudi Arabia.

On Saturday, the Saudi monarchy voiced support for Mubarak and his brutal police state and criticized the Egyptian people for attempting to get rid of the authoritarian thug who has ruled the country under the iron grip of martial law since October of 1981. Mubarak assumed the presidency after the assassination of his predecessor, Anwar El-Sadat.

King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud characterized the popular rebellion as “malicious sedition” and said the relationship between Mubarak’s regime and the Saudi regime represent a U.S.-allied Arab bulwark against Shi’ite Iran.

Britain catapulted the Ibn Saud monarchy to power in the 1920s under the excuse of protecting Muslims who were British subjects. In fact, the religiously austere Sauds were put in power at the behest of British Petroleum.

On Friday, an unnamed Israeli minister voiced his confidence that Mubarak would remain in power. “We believe that Egypt is going to overcome the current wave of demonstrations,” he told Time Magazine. “I’m not sure the time is right for the Arab region to go through the democratic process.”

Civil Disobedience at the White House for 9/11 Justice
January 28, 2011
Interview by Cosmos

Via9/11 Justice activist and researcher Jon Gold has announced his intention to chain himself to the White House fence this coming Monday, January 31. 9/11 Truth News asked Gold a few questions to find out more about the upcoming action.

9/11 Truth News: Why are you going to chain yourself to the White House?

Jon Gold: To try and bring attention to the fact that we were lied to about 9/11 and that there needs to be justice and accountability for what happened. That there are family members still seeking justice for what happened and that the people of the world deserve it. When you take into account what that day has been used for -- and then think about the fact that we don't exactly know what happened that day -- that is an unacceptable situation. People are dying. If that day wasn't what we were led to believe -- and it wasn't -- then the people of the world need to know about it.

911TN: This seems like a somewhat extreme action to take. Do you think more standard forms of protest have been exhausted?

Jon Gold: I have been fighting for truth, accountability, and justice for what happened that day for almost 9 years now. I have tried every avenue I can think of to bring attention to this issue, to no avail. Contacting your Representatives does nothing. Contacting the media does nothing. As I recently wrote about in support of Richard Falk, 9/11 is the "third rail." You are not allowed to question what happened that day without being ridiculed, slandered, attacked, and so forth. Chaining yourself to a fence in an effort to bring attention to an important cause such as this one is not extreme. Using that day to murder 1000's upon 1000's of people that had nothing to with the attacks is extreme. Using that day to take away our civil liberties is extreme. I am 100% sure that I am doing the right thing.

911TN: What do you hope to accomplish with this action? Do you expect any media coverage? Will the action have any effect if the media ignore it?

Jon Gold: As I said, I hope to bring attention to this very important issue. I have already been told by certain alternative media outlets that they will try to cover what it is that I'm doing, and I have asked people to ask all media to cover this action, so at least some will cover it. All good actions have an effect. I believe this to be a good action.

911TN: Have you spoken to any of the 9/11 family members about your action and if so, do they support you?

Jon Gold: I have spoken to some, and I can't speak for them, but it seems that they support what I'm trying to do. One in particular hoped that maybe someday a group of 9/11 family members would try to do the same thing.

911TN: What advice do you have for people who are concerned about the 9/11 issue but feel helpless to do anything about it?

Jon Gold: First, I think people need to take the time to learn about this issue. Don't believe everything you hear in movies, or articles you stumble across on the internet. Do your own research, and in time, you will have your own problems with the "official account." Steer clear of individuals who act as though you must believe this or that, and accuse you of being this or that if you don't. Steer clear of people that have obvious agendas. Judge people by the fruits of their labor. Be supportive of the family members that are seeking justice. Make sure to familiarize yourself with the families' efforts of the past. When you approach someone, do so in a way that isn't "scary" or "aggressive." Ask simple questions of people. Questions that plant a seed. Remember that you are fighting for 2,973 people that can no longer speak for themselves. Remember their families. Remember the people being killed during the 9/11 wars. Do your best. No one can ask for anything more.

London Truth Action has announced a civil disobedience action at Downing Street on the same day, in solidarity with Jon Gold.

January 31, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- Eyes fixed on Egypt, the consensus is that we are witnessing a global awakening. Mesmerized by the crowds, mainstream media reports, and 'pundits' analysis, we have abandoned our ability to think critically -- we fail to ask the right question: Why is the mainstream media in the U.S., the propaganda apparatus of the State and interest groups, condemning the Egyptian leader -- America and Israel's most subservient ally?

Clearly, we no longer suffer from short term memory in this country -- we suffer from a total loss of memory.

We tend to forget that well over a year ago, political actors in America and allied nations had full knowledge that Egypt's Hosni Mubarak was terminally ill. Certain that his reign was coming to a close, they devised a plan to compensate the inevitable loss of Mubarak's unconditional support. A plan was put into motion to assist orchestrate an uprising which would benefit their interests. The idea was to support the uprising so that an ally could be placed in Egypt without raising suspicion. Not only would America be seen as a benevolent force acting in good faith, contrary to its hypocritical policies, but perhaps more importantly for the decision makers, Israel's interests would be served - again - at the expense of the Arab world.

Who would be the wiser for it? It seems the public has fallen for the plan.

Media 'pundits' are eager to blame the timing of the protests in Egypt on economic hardships. Citing Egypt's jobless and inordinate poverty, they would have us believe that the American 'social media', Tweeter in particular, has prompted and aided the protests. They would have us believe that in spite of the fact that the Egyptians cry over the price of wheat, they have cell phones and access to social media. We are to accept that the poor, hungry, and jobless Egyptians are revolting against their lot by 'tweeting' in English.

Their access to modern technology aside, we are told to accept that the knowledge of English among 80 million Egyptians is so strong that they can 'tweet' -- fully comfortable with tweeter abbreviations and acronyms. Else, we are to believe that Egypt is busy 'tweeting' in Arabic even if Twitter does not lend itself to Arabic any more than it does to Persian.

When Iran's opposition leader, Mir-Hossein Mousavi compared the Egypt uprising to the 2009 post-election protests in Iran, he had a point. Both had an outside source. During the 2009 protests in Iran, 'tweets' were traced back to Israel (see link). The rumors and support for the "opposition" initiated in the West though Tehran Bureau -- partnered with the American PBS. A CNN desk was created to give the protests full coverage.

America has been attempting to undermine Iran's government for over 30 years. The media has helped to demonize the regime. Why would the media treat this obedient tyrant the same way? The mainstream media, as well as the 'left' are reporting on Egypt's protests round the clock. It is important to ask why.

For decades, the American government and allies have snuffed nationalist sentiments in the region in favor of dictators. Iran's Mossadegh, a fierce secular nationalist, who was democratically elected to be prime minister of Iran, was removed by a CIA-backed coup when he nationalized Iran’s oil and the oppressive Shah put in power. This political action led to the 1979 revolution. America lost a valuable puppet in the region.

Similarly, the nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egypt's patriotic Nasser led to his demise, paving the way for the eventual installation of a puppet regime - Mubarak.

But Mubarak is dying. Fearful of losing an important ally in Egypt's Mubarak, the political elite in America have undertaken a calculated risk: siding with the Egyptians to promote 'democracy' - hoping to help put in place one of their own. How likely is it that they will prevail in Egypt where they failed in Iran? Could it be that apprehensive about the future of Egypt, more importantly, its alliance with and subordination to Israel, the Noble Laureate option is being played?

Amongst the neoliberals, a new wave of thinking emerged which endorsed the idea of promoting 'democracy' ("liberal Imperialism") in order to evolve hegemonism to imperialism. Their thinking emphasized the 'character of the political leadership'. A wave of books centered on 'democratic transitions' that focused on the character of the leader with the right ideas appeared. They planned to emphasis new successful leaders such as Vaclav Havel, Nelson Mandela, Lech Walesa in order to promote their own in places of interest.

These neoliberals believed that "transition to 'democracy' required focusing on "political strategies" and introducing "indeterminancy" and "uncertainty" into the process of political change which they believed would be ground for cautious optimism that 'democracy' could catch on. Laureates were appointed: Shirin Ebadi, El Baradei, Obama, Liu Xiaobo...

Mr. ElBaradei, the Nobel Laureate and former chief of IAEA, applauded the violation of the NNPT with his acceptance speech as he praised the Bush-India nuclear deal - an NPT violation. Ally S. Korea's NPT violations were given a pass under his supervision, as well as that of Egypt's. In violation of the spirit of the NPT, he allowed the illegal referral of Iran to the UN Security Council. Mr. ElBaradei had proven himself worthy of American trust - he could be relied on and deserved a Nobel prize. He announced his readiness to run for president of Egypt.

Although not supported by protestors (no doubt placing him under house arrest will give him a boost), ElBaradei's return to Egypt enables the American politicians to speak from both sides of their mouths -- supporting the protestors' rights while supporting their ally. How could they go wrong? The thought process in this country (and elsewhere) has been guided and controlled by mainstream media and pundits, many of them neoconservatives. Curiously, the 24-7 media and its pundits have steered clear of ElBaradei and his arrest.

Sadly, the American political elite love Einstein's science but ignore his wisdom. When Einstein alerted FDR to the possibility of a nuclear weapon by the Germans, he was listened to and the way was paved for the Manhattan Project. America developed the heinous weapons of mass murder and dropped it on hundreds of thousands of Japanese citizen in the name of peace. Regrettably, as the Middle East and Africa react to America's decades of neocolonialist policies, Einstein's definition of insanity --"doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" -- is more apt than ever.

America (and her allies) has practiced the same damning foreign policy for several decades, each time expecting a new result. This political insanity manifests itself as the decision makers interfere in sovereignty of other countries - believing that they can continue to fool all the people all the time. Their controlled chaos may get out of hand and following the painful 'pangs' of neocolonial rule, we may witness the birth of a new world order.

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich has a degree in Public Diplomacy from USC Annenberg for Communication and Journalism. She is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the role of lobby groups in influencing US foreign policy.

Via
Groton - Connecticut National Guard Detachment 2, Company I, 185th Aviation Regiment of Groton has mobilized and will deploy to the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, to support the Multinational Force and Observers.

The unit left Connecticut Jan. 15 for Fort Benning, Ga., for further training and validation. The unit operates C-23C Sherpa aircraft and has deployed three times in the last seven years in support of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The unit will provide an on-demand aviation asset to the Multinational Force and Observers commander to support its mission of supervising the security provisions of the Egypt/ Israel Peace Treaty.

Chief Warrant Officer Four James Smith of Ivoryton commands the aviation unit.

(NaturalNews) Warning: Explicit language. We apologize for the extremely explicit nature of this story, but we feel that publishing this truth, no matter how repulsive, is in the public interest and serves the greater purpose of informing patients about what can happen to them while under sedation at hospitals. Do NOT read this article if you are easily offended, grossed out or otherwise disturbed by explicit language in a medical context. The information contained in this report is NOT appropriate for children. It is, however, true. This is not a hoax.

Now for the story:

If you're undergoing surgery at the hospital, you might want to have a secret nanny cam nearby to record what goes on, because it turns out that unconscious patients are being physically violated by medical students as part of their "medical training."

In a shocking report first published by Madison (http://madisonmag.com.au/news/no-co...), anesthetized patients in Australia were, without their knowledge or consent, repeatedly subjected to genital, anal and breast examinations by medical students.

In one case, a man who was under anesthesia for spinal surgery was subjected to "a queue of medical students" performing practice rectal examinations. One of the medical students who participated in this outrageous act later confessed, "I was [there], the patient was under a spinal [anesthetic] as well and there was a screen up and they just had a queue of medical students doing a rectal examination. He wasn't consented but because... you’re in that situation, you don’t have the confidence to say 'no' you just do it."

You really have to wonder what this poor patient thought when he woke up from surgery with a sore rectum that had been sodomized by a group of medical students while he was unconscious.

He may have awoken, realized something was terribly wrong, and thought to himself, in all seriousness, "Did I just get violated by my surgeon?"

The answer, of course, is YES! In fact, he got violated by a whole queue of medical students practicing to become doctors. Because there's no better way to train would-be doctors how to dehumanize and exploit patients in the future than to set medical examples of the physical violation of innocent patients today. It sets the proper tone in the minds of medical students for pushing vaccines, chemotherapy, pharmaceuticals and other dangerous medical procedures that harm hundreds of millions of people each year around the world.

I suppose their thinking goes something like this: If a medical student is willing to sodomize an unconscious patient just because his instructor tells him to, there's probably nothing he won't do to people in the future as long as he is instructed by proper "authorities" (medical journals, drug companies, government officials, etc.).

The things doctors do when pressured by their peers

It also carries the powerful hidden message that patients exist to be exploited by you, the doctor, in whatever way you wish, without their knowledge or consent. Note, too, that when faced by peer pressure, most medical students just go along with whatever they're ordered to do, regardless of whether it violates a person's rights, or medical ethics, or even federal law. As documented in this particular study, 82 percent of medical students essentially sodomized an unconscious patient after being instructed to do so by their medical instructor.

(By the way, if you've read this far, please remember that I included the EXPLICIT warning at the top of this article for a reason. Again, I apologize for the explicit nature of this article and I wish such events were not even taking place in our world.)

Some medical students held their ground and said NO

The study mentioned here documented the behavior of 200 medical students in Britain and Australia. Not all the students went along with the anal violation of unconscious patients, by the way. In one case, a student refused to participate in what he described as a woman "spread-eagled on the bed and the nurse is pulling down her jeans at the same time and it was all very complicated and you could see her, she was about seventeen."

Apparently, modern-day medical instructors think that stripping down a 17-year-old girl, naked and spread eagle, while parading a "train" of medical students to perform who-knows-what medical examinations on her is totally okay!

But hey, if they don't make it through medical school, they can always get a job working for the TSA, where probing someone's genitals without their consent is part of the official job description.

Training doctors to treat human beings like animals

What does all this tell you about the ethics of modern medicine? These doctors are the same people who tell you to vaccinate your children; to treat your cancer with chemotherapy; to take statin drugs and to staple your stomach in order to lose weight.

These are the monsters of our medical system -- the ethically deficient and criminally-minded medical molesters who commit heinous acts of what can only be called medical violence against teenage girls and unconscious men and women who are under their "care."

When you go in to get elective surgery for a serious medical problem such as colon cancer, you don't expect to have your rectum paraded on display as a teaching aid for a group of students who each get to finger your rectum before they cut it out. Seriously, this is what one of the medical students actually said about this:

"If you're having your anus cut out then having someone’s finger put in it anyway, I just thought was an irrelevance basically so I have no qualms what[so]ever about not having specifically consented her to allow me to do a rectal examination."

This is what really goes on behind closed doors, under the surgical blankets and behind the screens, where innocent patients are sodomized, victimized and violated by their health care providers. And this isn't just one isolated case, either... it's how medical students are being TRAINED as part of their medical education!

This isn't a rogue pervert physician, in other words: It's an institutionalized psychopathic power trip that hints at the way conventional medicine is carried out right now, all across the world. It reminds me of the Milgram experiments where students were very easily trained to apply deadly levels of electroshock jolts to innocent victims merely because they were ordered to do so by an instructor (http://www.naturalnews.com/025141.html).

Those experiments proved that 70 percent of people will torture other human beings if encouraged to do so by someone in an apparent position of authority.

So if you ever undergo surgery, and you wake up with a throbbing rectum or obvious physical abuse of other body parts, it's probably not just in your head: You may have been victimized by medical students or physicians who think there's absolutely nothing wrong with exploiting your body for their own purposes while you're unconscious.

Your disease is their treatment experiment. Your suffering is their amusement. Your rectum is their training aid. You are there essentially to be treated like an unconscious rag doll by medical staff and medical students who have lost any and all sense of the meaning behind the term "health care."

These are despicable people, and the fact that they are tomorrow's doctors helps explain why health care is such an utter failure on every level: Physical, ethical and spiritual.

Now for the good news

The good news in all this, if there can be any found, is that an increasing number of younger medical students are actually embracing complementary medicine. They are increasingly questioning the old, outmoded mythologies behind pharmaceuticals, vaccines and chemotherapy, and they're learning the importance of using holistic healing methods to support patients rather than poison them.

Not all conventional doctors are psychopaths, in other words. There are good doctors among the bad ones, and there are even conventional doctors who actually have ethics and would never even think of violating patients in such a way. Some doctors even manage to make it through medical school without losing their moral compass, if you can believe that, and we should respect those who do.

Many doctors deserve tremendous credit for their miraculous work in emergency rooms, saving lives and treating acute injuries with remarkable skill and efficiency. Conventional medicine has an important (limited) role to play in society, and there are times when rectal exams are, of course, medically necessary. But when conducted, they should be done with consent unless special circumstances exist such as an unconscious gunshot victim needing acute emergency care that requires immediate action on the part of doctors and surgeons.

There's more good news in all this: The era of Big Pharma medicine is crumbling. The mythology behind vaccines is being increasingly exposed as quackery and fraud. The insanity of harmful mammograms and unnecessary surgical procedures is also being increasingly reported. Times are changing, and conventional medicine is resorting to outright desperation to keep itself in business at a time when most people are heading in the direction of holistic medicine based on patient compassion and understanding.

I bet you won't see naturopathic physicians (N.D.s) violating their patients. NDs, homeopaths, herbalists and massage therapists are usually compassionate, caring individuals who respect their patients as real human beings. They honor your boundaries and they practice the healing arts with a genuine sense of ethics that's too often lacking in the world of conventional medicine.

Remember: You have power in all this. When faced with any kind of health or medical situation, you always have a choice of where to spend your dollars. I encourage you to avoid choosing conventional doctors and their superbug-infested hospitals. Wherever possible, choose naturopathic health care offered by compassionate and sensitive health professionals who treat you like a valued human being and respect your boundaries.

And if you're forced to go into a conventional hospital for one reason or another, duct tape your butt cheeks together just to be sure no one goes in there. Put a sticker on the tape that reads, "Warranty void if seal broken," and point out to your surgeon that your rectum is off limits to him, his staff and his students. Make him sign a piece of paper that says, "I will not violate my patients." They make you sign a pile of paperwork, after all. Have a few documents of your own for them to sign for a change. That paperwork might include valuable tidbits such as, "The foot to amputate is on the LEFT. The foot to leave alone is on the RIGHT. The entire anal-rectal area is entirely off limits and don't play with my breasts while I'm unconscious."

This is really happening

I wish I were making up this story. I wish it were fiction, but sadly it's reality. After writing about health and medicine for nearly 8 years, there's nothing I've seen that surprises me anymore. To hear that medical students are being trained as a group to sodomize unconscious patients isn't actually the worst thing I've heard about conventional medicine.

They do far worse things to children with psychiatric drugs, and to cancer patients via chemotherapy poisons. The widespread vaccination of children with utterly horrifying chemical ingredients that are injected into their bodies is yet another true story of the harm routinely caused by conventional medicine.

The good news, of course, is that I believe this era of medical violence against children and adults -- which I call the Dark Ages of medicine -- is crumbling by the day. The tide is rapidly shifting, and there will be a day in the near future when Big Pharma CEOs spend their days in prison, when ass-raping surgeons are convicted of their crimes, and when vaccines are rejected by the vast majority of people who come to realize the truth about how harmful they really are.

Things really are going to get better in the years ahead. And I hope to be part of bringing you that good news here on NaturalNews.com.

Again, I apologize for the explicit language in this article, but I hope you agree that the seriousness of the facts warrant publication. If we refuse to talk about what's really happening behind closed doors in our hospitals and clinics, then we fail to prevent it from happening to other victims in the future.

Via
The biggest news from Wikileaks today isn't that the US embassy in Jakarta requested $100,000 to get a million people to "like" them on Facebook. Apparently, the UFO cable has been leaked.

UFO news site All News Web claims to have received a leak from Wikileaks about that UFO-related cable Julian Assange mentioned in the Guardian several weeks ago. Here's the scoop.

According to paranormal news site All News Web:

A source from within the inner circle of the Wikileaks team has confidentially leaked to All News Web the content of a State Dept cable, concerning UFO affairs, that Wikileaks has declined to upload onto their website.

The cable states: "It is critical all embassy staff understand that they are not to discuss under any circumstance concerns DOD has with UFOs entering orbit, once again the seriousness of this matter cannot be overstated"

The cable was sent on 9 November, 2005 by the State Dept to a diplomat connected to the US embassy in Kiev, Ukraine. As it implies, the State Dept was concerned with diplomats with loose tongues chatting about UFOs at cocktail parties and conceding that the US does allocate resources to the matter.

I'm inclined to believe that this leak could be real, if only because it's so ambiguous. Are embassy staff told not to discuss UFOs because the DOD isn't interested in them, and doesn't want people thinking they're using resources for UFO hunting? Or is the DOD asking embassy staff to cover up an ultra-classified project that they've improbably shared with diplomats in Kiev?

UPDATE: Many are calling this a hoax, which seems reasonable. But there has been no official word from Wikileaks on the matter yet

Via
One of the “new” names being mentioned as a possible alternative to President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Omar Suleiman, is actually not so new to anyone who has followed the American policy of renditions for terror suspects.After dissolving his cabinet yesterday, Mubarak appointed Suleiman vice-president, and according to many commentators he is poised to be a potential successor, and an alternative to Mubarak’s son and intended heir until now, Gamal Mubarak. Suleiman is a well-known quantity in Washington. Suave, sophisticated, and fluent in English, he has served for years as the main conduit between the United States and Mubarak. While he has a reputation for loyalty and effectiveness, he also carries some controversial baggage from the standpoint of those looking for a clean slate on human rights. As I described in my book “The Dark Side,” since 1993 Suleiman has headed the feared Egyptian general intelligence service. In that capacity, he was the C.I.A.’s point man in Egypt for renditions—the covert program in which the C.I.A. snatched terror suspects from around the world and returned them to Egypt and elsewhere for interrogation, often under brutal circumstances.

As laid out in greater detail by Stephen Grey, in his book “Ghost Plane,” beginning in the nineteen-nineties, Suleiman negotiated directly with top Agency officials. Every rendition was greenlighted at the highest levels of both the U.S. and Egyptian intelligence agencies. Edward S. Walker, Jr., a former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, described Suleiman as “very bright, very realistic,” adding that he was cognizant that there was a downside to “some of the negative things that the Egyptians engaged in, of torture and so on. But he was not squeamish, by the way.”

Technically, U.S. law required the C.I.A. to seek “assurances” from Egypt that rendered suspects wouldn’t face torture. But under Suleiman’s reign at the intelligence service, such assurances were considered close to worthless. As Michael Scheuer, a former C.I.A. officer who helped set up the practice of rendition, later testified before Congress, even if such “assurances” were written in indelible ink, “they weren’t worth a bucket of warm spit.”

British intelligence reported in February 2002 that the Israeli Mossad ran the Arab hijacker cells that were later blamed by the U.S. government's 9/11 Commission for carrying out the aerial attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. WMR has received details of the British intelligence report, which, was suppressed by the government of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair.

A Mossad unit consisting of six Egyptian- and Yemeni-born Jews infiltrated "Al Qaeda" cells in Hamburg (the Atta-Mamoun Darkanzali cell), south Florida, and Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates in the months before 9/11. The Mossad not only infiltrated cells but began to run them and give them specific orders that would eventually culminate in their being on board four regularly-scheduled flights originating in Boston, Washington Dulles, and Newark, New Jersey on 9/11.

The Mossad infiltration team comprised six Israelis, comprising two cells of three agents, who all received special training at a Mossad base in the Negev Desert in their future control and handling of the "Al Qaeda" cells. One Mossad cell traveled to Amsterdam whereb they submitted to the operational control of the Mossad's Europe Station, which operates from the El Al complex at Schiphol International Airport. The three-man Mossad unit then traveled to Hamburg where it made contact with Mohammed Atta, who believed they were sent by Osama Bin Laden. In fact, they were sent by Ephraim Halevy, the chief of Mossad.

The second three-man Mossad team flew to New York and then to southern Florida where they began to direct the "Al Qaeda" cells operating from Hollywood, Miami, Vero Beach, Delray Beach, and West Palm Beach. Israeli "art students," already under investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration for casing the offices and homes of federal law enforcement officers, had been living among and conducting surveillance of the activities, including flight school training, of the future Arab "hijacker" cells, particularly in Hollywood and Vero Beach.

In August 2001, the first Mossad team flew with Atta and other Hamburg "Al Qaeda" members to Boston. Logan International Airport's security was contracted to Huntleigh USA, a firm owned by an Israeli airport security firm closely connected to Mossad -- International Consultants on Targeted Security - ICTS. ICTS's owners were politically connected to the Likud Party, particularly the Netanyahu faction and then-Jerusalem mayor and future Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It was Olmert who personally interceded with New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to have released from prison five Urban Moving Systems employees, identified by the CIA and FBI agents as Mossad agents. The Israelis were the only suspects arrested anywhere in the United States on 9/11 who were thought to have been involved in the 9/11 attacks.

The two Mossad teams sent regular coded reports on the progress of the 9/11 operation to Tel Aviv via the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. WMR has learned from a Pentagon source that leading Americans tied to the media effort to pin 9/11 on Arab hijackers, Osama Bin Laden, and the Taliban were present in the Israeli embassy on September 10, 2001, to coordinate their media blitz for the subsequent days and weeks following the attacks. It is more than likely that FBI counter-intelligence agents who conduct surveillance of the Israeli embassy have proof on the presence of the Americans present at the embassy on September 10. Some of the Americans are well-known to U.S. cable news television audiences.

In mid-August, the Mossad team running the Hamburg cell in Boston reported to Tel Aviv that the final plans for 9/11 were set. The Florida-based Mossad cell reported that the documented "presence" of the Arab cell members at Florida flight schools had been established.

The two Mossad cells studiously avoided any mention of the World Trade Center or targets in Washington, DC in their coded messages to Tel Aviv. Halevy covered his tracks by reporting to the CIA of a "general threat" by an attack by Arab terrorists on a nuclear plant somewhere on the East Coast of the United States. CIA director George Tenet dismissed the Halevy warning as "too non-specific." The FBI, under soon-to-be-departed director Louis Freeh, received the "non-specific" warning about an attack on a nuclear power plant and sent out the information in its routine bulletins to field agents but no high alert was ordered.

The lack of a paper trail pointing to "Al Qaeda" as the masterminds on 9/11, which could then be linked to Al Qaeda's Mossad handlers, threw off the FBI. On April 19, 2002, FBI director Robert Mueller, in a speech to San Francisco's Commonwealth Club, stated: "In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper -- either here in the United States, or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere -- that mentioned any aspect of the September 11 plot."

The two Mossad "Al Qaeda" infiltration and control teams had also helped set up safe houses for the quick exfiltration of Mossad agents from the United States. Last March, WMR reported: "WMR has learned from two El Al sources who worked for the Israeli airline at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport that on 9/11, hours after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded all civilian domestic and international incoming and outgoing flights to and from the United States, a full El Al Boeing 747 took off from JFK bound for Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport. The two El Al employee sources are not Israeli nationals but legal immigrants from Ecuador who were working in the United States for the airline. The flight departed JFK at 4:11 pm and its departure was, according to the El Al sources, authorized by the direct intervention of the U.S. Department of Defense. U.S. military officials were on the scene at JFK and were personally involved with the airport and air traffic control authorities to clear the flight for take-off. According to the 9/11 Commission report, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta ordered all civilian flights to be grounded at 9:45 am on September 11." WMR has learned from British intelligence sources that the six-man Mossad team was listed on the El Al flight manifest as El Al employees.

WMR previously reported that the Mossad cell operating in the Jersey City-Weehawken area of New Jersey through Urban Moving Systems was suspected by some in the FBI and CIA of being involved in moving explosives into the World Trade Center as well as staging "false flag" demonstrations at at least two locations in north Jersey: Liberty State Park and an apartment complex in Jersey City as the first plane hit the World Trade Center's North Tower. One team of Urban Moving Systems Mossad agents was arrested later on September 11 and jailed for five months at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Some of their names turned up in a joint CIA-FBI database as known Mossad agents, along with the owner of Urban Moving Systems, Dominik Suter, whose name also appeared on a "Law Enforcement Sensitive" FBI 9/11 suspects list, along with the names of key "hijackers," including Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour, as well as the so-called "20th hijacker," Zacarias Moussaoui.

Suter was allowed to escape the United States after the FBI made initial contact with him at the Urban Moving Systems warehouse in Weehawken, New Jersey, following the 9/11 attacks. Suter was later permitted to return to the United States where he was involved in the aircraft parts supply business in southern Florida, according to an informe3d source who contacted WMR. Suter later filed for bankruptcy in Florida for Urban Moving Systems and other businesses he operated: Suburban Moving & Storage Inc.; Max Movers, Inc.; Invsupport; Woodflooring Warehouse Corp.; One Stop Cleaning LLC; and City Carpet Upholstery, Inc. At the time of the bankruptcy filing in Florida, Suter listed his address as 1867 Fox Court, Wellington, FL 33414, with a phone number of 561 204-2359.

From the list of creditors it can be determined that Suter had been operating in the United States since 1993, the year of the first attack on the World Trade Center. In 1993, Suter began racking up American Express credit card charges totaling $21,913.97. Suter also maintained credit card accounts with HSBC Bank and Orchard Bank c/o HSBC Card Services of Salinas, California, among other banks. Suter also did business with the Jewish Community Center of Greater Palm Beach in Florida and Ryder Trucks in Miami. Miami and southern Florida were major operating areas for cells of Israeli Mossad agents masquerading as "art students," who were living and working near some of the identified future Arab "hijackers" in the months preceding 9/11.

ABC's 20/20 correspondent John Miller ensured that the Israeli connection to "Al Qaeda's" Arab hijackers was buried in an "investigation" of the movers' activities on 9/11. Anchor Barbara Walters helped Miller in putting a lid on the story about the movers and Suter aired on June 21, 2002. Miller then went on to become the FBI public affairs spokesman to ensure that Mueller and other FBI officials kept to the "Al Qaeda" script as determined by the Bush administration and the future 9/11 Commission. But former CIA chief of counter-terrorism Vince Cannistraro let slip to ABC an important clue to the operations of the Mossad movers in New Jersey when he stated that the Mossad agents "set up or exploited for the purpose of launching an intelligence operation against radical Islamists in the area, particularly in the New Jersey-New York area." The "intelligence operation" turned out to have been the actual 9/11 attacks. And it was no coincidence that it was ABC's John Miller who conducted a May 1998 rare interview of Osama Bin Laden at his camp in Afghanistan. Bin Laden played his part well for future scenes in the fictional "made-for-TV" drama known as 9/11.

WMR has also learned from Italian intelligence sources that Mossad's running of "Al Qaeda" operatives did not end with running the "hijacking" teams in the United States and Hamburg. Other Arab "Al Qaeda" operatives, run by Mossad, were infiltrated into Syria but arrested by Syrian intelligence. Syria was unsuccessful in turning them to participate in intelligence operations in Lebanon. Detailed information on Bin Laden's support team was offered to the Bush administration, up to days prior to 9/11, by Gutbi al-Mahdi, the head of the Sudanese Mukhabarat intelligence service. The intelligence was rejected by the Biush White House. It was later reported that Sudanese members of "Al Qaeda's" support network were double agents for Mossad who had also established close contacts with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and operated in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Eritrea, as well as Sudan. The Mossad connection to Al Qaeda in Sudan was likely known by the Sudanese Mukhabarat, a reason for the rejection of its intelligence on "Al Qaeda" by the thoroughly-Mossad penetrated Bush White House. Yemen had also identified "Al Qaeda" members who were also Mossad agents. A former chief of Mossad revealed to this editor in 2002 that Yemeni-born Mossad "deep insertion" commandos spotted Bin Laden in the Hadhramaut region of eastern Yemen after his escape from Tora Bora in Afghanistan, following the U.S. invasion.

French intelligence determined that other Egyptian- and Yemeni-born Jewish Mossad agents were infiltrated into Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates as radical members of the Muslim Brotherhood. However, the "Muslim Brotherhood" agents actually were involved in providing covert Israeli funding for "Al Qaeda" activities. On February 21, 2006, WMR reported on the U.S. Treasury Secretary's firing by President Bush over information discovered on the shady "Al Qaeda" accounts in the United Arab Emirates: "Banking insiders in Dubai report that in March 2002, U.S. Secretary of Treasury Paul O’Neill visited Dubai and asked for documents on a $109,500 money transfer from Dubai to a joint account held by hijackers Mohammed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi at Sun Trust Bank in Florida. O’Neill also asked UAE authorities to close down accounts used by Al Qaeda . . . . The UAE complained about O’Neill’s demands to the Bush administration. O’Neill’s pressure on the UAE and Saudis contributed to Bush firing him as Treasury Secretary in December 2002 " O'Neill may have also stumbled on the "Muslim Brotherhood" Mossad operatives operating in the emirates who were directing funds to "Al Qaeda."

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Sharjah's ruler, Sultan bin Mohammed al-Qasimi, who survived a palace coup attempt in 1987, opened his potentate to Russian businessmen like Viktor Bout, as well as to financiers of radical Muslim groups, including the Taliban and "Al Qaeda."

Moreover, this Israeli support for "Al Qaeda" was fully known to Saudi intelligence, which approved of it in order to avoid compromising Riyadh. The joint Israeli-Saudi support for "Al Qaeda" was well-known to the Sharjah and Ras al Khaimah-based aviation network of the now-imprisoned Russian, Viktor Bout, jailed in New York on terrorism charges. The presence of Bout in New York, a hotbed of Israeli intelligence control of U.S. federal prosecutors, judges, as well as the news media, is no accident: Bout knows enough about the Mossad activities in Sharjah in support of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, where Bout also had aviation and logistics contracts, to expose Mossad as the actual mastermind behind 9/11. Bout's aviation empire also extended to Miami and Dallas, two areas that were nexuses for the Mossad control operations for the "Al Qaeda" flight training operations of the Arab cell members in the months prior to 9/11.

Bout's path also crossed with "Al Qaeda's" support network at the same bank in Sharjah, HSBC. Mossad's phony Muslim Brotherhood members from Egypt and Yemen controlled financing for "Al Qaeda" through the HSBC accounts in Sharjah. Mossad's Dominik Suter also dealt with HSBC in the United States. The FBI's chief counter-terrorism agent investigating Al Qaeda, John O'Neill, became aware of the "unique" funding mechanisms for Al Qaeda. It was no mistake that O'Neill was given the job as director of security for the World Trade Center on the eve of the attack. O'Neill perished in the collapse of the complex.

Mossad uses a number of Jews born in Arab countries to masquerade as Arabs. They often carry forged or stolen passports from Arab countries or nations in Europe that have large Arab immigrant populations, particularly Germany, France, Britain, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

For Mossad, the successful 9/11 terrorist "false flag" operation was a success beyond expectations. The Bush administration, backed by the Blair government, attacked and occupied Iraq, deposing Saddam Hussein, and turned up pressure on Israel's other adversaries, including Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Hamas, and Lebanese Hezbollah. The Israelis also saw the U.S., Britain, and the UN begin to crack down on the Lebanese Shi'a diamond business in Democratic Republic of Congo and West Africa, and with it, the logistics support provided by Bout's aviation companies, which resulted in a free hand for Tel Aviv to move in on Lebanese diamond deals in central and west Africa.

Then-Israeli Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu commented on the 9/11 attacks on U.S. television shortly after they occurred. Netanyahu said: "It is very good!" It now appears that Netanyahu, in his zeal, blew Mossad's cover as the masterminds of 9/11.

WASHINGTON — US banking powerhouse Goldman Sachs said Friday it was more than tripling the salary of chief executive Lloyd Blankfein to $2 million in 2011 from $600,000 last year.

The four other top executives of Wall Street's premier investment bank will also see their basic salaries triple from the present $600,000: chief operating officer Gary Cohn, finance director David Viniar, and two vice presidents Michael Evans and John Weinberg will each earn $1.85 million, Goldman said in a document published Friday.

Such sums do not include the year-end bonuses which regularly multiply salaries at the top US banks by several times.

Micro Drones to Fly Surveillance Missions Over The U.S.
Michael Edwards and Alex ThomasActivist Post and The Intel Hub
Friday, January 28, 2011

In 2007, it was revealed by reporters in Texas that unmanned drones were being used in supposed border control operations. We detailed that report with supporting evidence that drones clearly were being used inland away from border control functions.

Recently, an article from Miami-Dade announced the arrival of a 16-pound micro drone T-Hawk surveillance model designed by Honeywell. The video below shows a more detailed view of the capabilities of this surveillance drone. Keep in mind, this is only what is being announced at the moment, which has nothing to do with the massive amount of R&D that has being going on to reduce the size of flying surveillance. There have even been reports about "wasp" drones to sniff out Wi-FI networks as well.

Pending FAA approval, these specific unmanned aerial vehicles are set to be used domestically throughout the United States. Besides the obvious uses for these drones such as during a legitimate raid, these drones may be used in order to further the police state and restrict free speech in America.

At this point, domestic UAV operations are extremely limited. But with the astonishing growth of the industry and the efforts of AUVSI, the UAV Caucus, and others to loosen FAA restrictions, we can expect an explosion of use by local and federal policing agencies in the near future. such as political protests. This is simply another push towards a complete police state.

What will be considered anti-social behavior remains to be seen, but if the ever evolving police state is any indication these drones will be used to spy on citizens who are against the private Federal Reserve, Obamacare, and the New World Order.

This information is right out there in the open yet it seems that the American people are once again asleep at the wheel. Where are the widespread protests against the aerial surveillance of any American that the corrupt federal government chooses to set their sights on?

We're clearly entering some sort of science fiction reality where anything seems to be possible. We have flying vaccines on the backs of GM mosquitoes, as well as the imminent arrival of nanotechnology and nanobots in our daily lives, which only portends more nightmarish developments from the Department of Defense. But here is the latest from Honeywell, a huge military contractor working with DARPA:

Via HuffPost
The open Internet's role in popular uprising is now undisputed. Look no further than Egypt, where the Mubarak regime today reportedly shut down Internet and cell phone communications -- a troubling predictor of the fierce crackdown that has followed.

What's even more troubling is news that one American company is aiding Egypt's harsh response through sales of technology that makes this repression possible.

The Internet's favorite offspring -- Twitter, Facebook and YouTube -- are now heralded on CNN, BBC and Fox News as flag-bearers for a new era of citizen journalism and activism. (More and more these same news organizations have abandoned their own, more traditional means of newsgathering to troll social media for breaking information.)

But the open Internet's power cuts both ways: The tools that connect, organize and empower protesters can also be used to hunt them down.

Telecom Egypt, the nation's dominant phone and Internet service provider, is a state-run enterprise, which made it easy on Friday morning for authorities to pull the plug and plunge much of the nation into digital darkness.

Moreover, Egypt also has the ability to spy on Internet and cell phone users, by opening their communication packets and reading their contents. Iran used similar methods during the 2009 unrest to track, imprison and in some cases, "disappear" truckloads of cyber-dissidents.

The companies that profit from sales of this technology need to be held to a higher standard. One in particular is an American firm, Narus of Sunnyvale, Calif., which has sold Telecom Egypt "real-time traffic intelligence" equipment.

Narus, now owned by Boeing, was founded in 1997 by Israeli security experts to create and sell mass surveillance systems for governments and large corporate clients.

The company is best known for creating NarusInsight, a supercomputer system which is allegedly used by the National Security Agency and other entities to perform mass surveillance and monitoring of public and corporate Internet communications in real time.

Narus provides Egypt Telecom with Deep Packet Inspection equipment (DPI), a content-filtering technology that allows network managers to inspect, track and target content from users of the Internet and mobile phones, as it passes through routers on the information superhighway.

Other Narus global customers include the national telecommunications authorities in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia -- two countries that regularly register alongside Egypt near the bottom of Human Rights Watch's world report.

"Anything that comes through (an Internet protocol network), we can record," Steve Bannerman, Narus' marketing vice president, once boasted to Wired about the service. "We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on; we can reconstruct their (Voice Over Internet Protocol) calls."

Other North American and European companies are selling DPI to enable their business customers "to see, manage and monetize individual flows to individual subscribers." But this "Internet-enhancing" technology has been sought out by regimes in Iran, China and Burma for more brutal purposes.

In addition to Narus, there are a number of companies, including many others in the United States, that produce and traffic in similar spying and control technology. This list of DPI providers includes Zeugma Systems (Canada), Camiant (USA), Procera Networks (USA), Allot (Israel), Ixia (USA), AdvancedIO (Canada) and Sandvine (Canada), among others.

These companies typically partner with Internet Service Providers to insert DPI along the main arteries of the Web. All Net traffic in and out of Iran, for example, travels through one portal -- the Telecommunications Company of Iran -- which facilitates the use of DPI.

When commercial network operators use DPI, the privacy of Internet users is compromised. But in government hands, the use of DPI can crush dissent and lead to human rights violations.

Setting the Bar High for DPI Sales

Even Republicans and Democrats seem to agree on this problem.

"Internet censorship is a real challenge, and not one any particular industry -- much less any single company -- can tackle on its own, " Rep. Mary Bono Mack wrote in a 2009 letter to Rep. Henry Waxman, then chair of the House Commerce Committee. "Efforts to promote freedom of expression and to limit the impact of censorship require both private and public sector engagement."

Earlier this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Egypt's government "not to prevent peaceful protests or block communications, including on social media."

Bono Mack's letter and Clinton's statement echo Free Press' call for a congressional inquiry into the issue. But this is just a start.

Before DPI becomes more widely deployed around the world and at home, the Congress ought to establish clear criteria for authorizing the use of such surveillance and control technologies.

The power to control the Internet and the resulting harm to democracy are so disturbing that the threshold for using DPI must be very high.

Today we're seeing the grave dangers of this technology unfold in real time on the streets of Cairo.

Via
The United States and Japan received sharp warnings from the IMF and ratings agencies Thursday that they must tackle their huge budget deficits to avoid investors dumping their bonds, which would create a sovereign debt crisis and push up their borrowing costs.

Rating agency Standard & Poor's on Thursday cut Japan's long-term debt rating for the first time since 2002, and a day after a U.S. agency raised its 2011 budget deficit forecast by 40 per cent. In the U.S., Moody's Investors Service warned said while the risk to the United States' coveted top triple-A rating was small, it was rising.

U.S. citizen who killed 2 Pakistanis is spy: media
17:01, January 28, 2011

Via
Pakistani media reported Friday that a U.S. official, who shot dead two Pakistani citizens in the city of Lahore on Thursday, is a spy or working for the Blackwater.

The American employee at the U.S. consulate in Lahore, Raymond Davis, previously reported as Steve David, shot dead two Pakistani motorcyclists, city police chief Aslam Tarin said.

A pedestrian was also killed by a speeding car from the U.S. consulate which was called to help, police said.

Davis had introduced himself as Technical Advisor to the police but major Pakistani dailies reported on Friday that he was a soldier, spy and possibly a member of the Blackwater private security company.

Davis, who is now charged in murder case, told the police investigators that he fired in self-defence as the two motorcyclists had wanted to rob him.

The largely circulated Urdu language Daily Jang reported that the police suspected Davis as an American spy. It reported that he is not a diplomat and can not claim diplomatic immunity.

"The U.S. killer is a spy," The News International also quoted the police as saying.

Daily The Nation reported on its front page a Blackwater role suspected in the shooting of the two Pakistanis.

Express quoted law minister of Punjab Province, Rana Sanaullah, as saying, "It seems that the American national was on a secret mission as what he was doing in the busiest Mazang area of Lahore city."

Police sources said that the American killer will be produced in a court on Friday. Security measures have been taken outside a Lahore court.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik told the National Assembly that the American killer will face legal action, adding that no foreigner is entitled to carry weapons.

The U.S. State Department has said the United States will extend all help to the Pakistani authorities in investigation into the matter.

On Thursday, a group of people gathered in Lahore and blocked the road shortly after the incident by setting tyres on fire to protest against the killing.

Via
It’s already pretty well-known that the United States provides billions of dollars of military and economic aid to Egypt every year, and numerous polls have shown that the general Egyptian public doesn’t exactly have a solicitous opinion of the United States. Nonetheless, one has to wonder what the average Egyptian out in the streets over the past several days protesting an authoritarian and corrupt regime thinks when they look down at the tear gas canister that was just fired at them, and see this:

Is it really so hard to understand why people don’t like us when we’re providing the weapons that are being used against them?

New York Republican Peter King has introduced a bill that would protect the army of citizen spies Homeland Security hopes to recruit under Janet Napolitano’s “See Something, Say Something” snoop campaign from lawsuits brought by innocent people wrongly accused of being terrorists or extremists.

“A top US lawmaker unveiled legislation on Wednesday to protect individuals who tip off authorities to potential extremist threats from lawsuits, in the event that they turn out to finger innocents,” reports AFP.

House Homeland Security Chairman King, who is pushing the “See Something, Say Something Act,” wants to shield “good citizens who report suspicious activity” from facing the consequences of misidentifying innocent behavior as extremism or terror.

Of course, this will only encourage untrained people to report any behavior whatsoever, no matter how benign, as potential terrorism, creating an army of enthusiastic but hapless citizen spies.

“King said his bill would extend protections from individuals “who report suspicious activity anywhere,” adds the report, making reference to the DHS’ “See Something, Say Something” campaign, which characterizes paying for things with cash as a suspicious activity.

The program was launched with the aid of Orwellian telescreens at Wal-Mart checkouts that play a message from Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano encouraging Americans to report anything unusual to Wal-Mart managers. The program was subsequently expanded to include 9,000 federal buildings, as well as sports stadiums, businesses and communities in general.

DHS will no longer be limited to the airport in the form of the TSA, but will become a ubiquitous entity policing everyone through a network of citizen spies and infrastructure security technology. The agency will also assume the mantle of regulating Americans’ every behavior and activity. DHS signs are already in place all over the country telling people where they can and can’t park their cars.

As we have documented, every historical example of such informant programs illustrates that they never lead to a more secure society, but instead breed suspicion, distrust, fear and resentment amongst the population. The only “benefit” that such programs have ever achieved is allowing the state to more easily identify and persecute political dissidents, while discouraging the wider population from engaging in any criticism against the government.

Since its official launch, the See Something, Say Something campaign has successfully wasted thousands of dollars of taxpayer money after people reported half-empty flasks of coffee and bags of clothes as deadly threats that required a response from bomb squads.

Of course, as we have documented, the federal government is fully aware of the fact that Americans are just as likely to be killed by lightning strikes, peanut allergies or accident-causing deer than they are by terrorists.

See Something, Say Something has little to do with combating terrorism, and everything to do with implanting the notion that Americans are constantly under surveillance from each other and may be reported to the authorities for any minor example of aberrant behavior no matter how benign.

In addition, since the Department of Homeland Security has characterized political activism which targets the state as extremist and terrorist activity, Americans are being trained that exercising their constitutional rights could get them in hot water with the law should their behavior be deemed suspicious by ignorant wannabe citizen spies who see themselves as terrorist hunters.

In an ironic twist, Rep. King, who is now trying to protect snoops who identify innocent behavior as extremism from lawsuits, was one of the primary co-sponsors of a 2009 House resolution that attempted to get answers as to why Homeland Security equated veterans, gun owners, Ron Paul supporters, and people who fly the U.S. flag, with violent terrorists, following the release of the agency’s infamous MIAC report

(NaturalNews) Former President and CEO of the International Oil Spill Control Corporation, Dr. Thomas B. Manton heroically fought to expose the truth about the massive Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, which was caused by a BP oil platform explosion in April 2010. However, all of his hard work resulted in his false imprisonment and subsequent murder, an all-too-common scenario among whistle blowers who expose lies and corruption.

Dr. Manton was one of the first to warn the public that far more oil than what BP had reported was gushing into the Gulf every single day, and that, eventually, the massive oil-and-chemical plumes would wrap their way around the Gulf and travel up the eastern seaboard, contaminating beaches and wildlife all along the way. Manton also warned that the worst is yet to come within the next few years as the toxic brew slowly makes its way throughout the environment.

"Once the winds change, it will then come eastward and pollute the beaches of the west coast of Florida and the "loop current" could carry this oil spill right around Florida, through the Florida Keys and pollute the east coast of Florida as well," Manton wrote on May 28, 2010.

Unlike most others, Manton was not about to let BP or the U.S. government get away with hiding the facts about the spill, facts that include a growing list of human deaths from exposure to both the oil and the Corexit chemicals used to mitigate it. And this is precisely why people like Dr. Tom Termotto, National Coordinator of the Gulf Oil Spill Remediation Conference, say that Manton was deliberately framed and murdered.

"[Manton] was particularly distressed that the U.S. Federal Government allowed BP to completely take charge of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster area, as his experience taught him that the offending oil company should never be given command over the oil spill response," said Termotto, speaking of Manton's extensive history in dealing with oil spills. And when Manton was first arrested, Termotto explained that "Dr. Manton was serving an unlawful 15-year prison sentence, convicted of a crime he did not commit."

An August 8, 2010, report in the Keechobee News explains that Manton was found guilty on one count of possession of child pornography. However, some sources claim the offending material was planted on Manton's computer in order to set him up. Either way, Florida's criminal justice system oddly placed Manton into a regular prison, where eventually he was murdered by other inmates for the heinous nature of his supposed crimes.

"[Manton] was railroaded through the criminal justice process with such speed, force and determination -- after the BP Oil Spill received so much national and global attention -- that many of us could only come to certain disturbing conclusions," said Termotto. "His sentence, given all the extenuating circumstances, exceptional disregard of various criteria, and flouting of sentencing guidelines, was unprecedented in Florida history."

And Manton is not the only Gulf whistle blower to have been targeted for silencing. In August 2010, Matthew Simmons, another leading whistle blower in the BP oil scandal, was found dead in his Maine home. Some reports say he accidentally drowned in his hot tub, while others say he died of a heart attack. Many believe Simmons death was also a set up because of his outspoken opposition to what he regularly said was a massive BP coverup.

According to Simmons, BP did not respond to the disaster properly, and afterwords tried to lie about it. Simmons also accused the mainstream media of being a BP accomplice, conveniently cooperating with its efforts to dupe the public into thinking everything was under control when it really was not. Like Manton, Simmons also warned that human health would be greatly affected by the disaster in years to come.

What makes both deaths perhaps the most highly suspicious is the mainstream media's treatment of both situations. Both men were very outspoken and received significant media attention during the time of the disaster. But upon his death, Simmons received scant and conflicting reports about the cause of his death. And Manton's death has yet to even receive any media attention.

Rahm Emanuel's Father Specialized in Bus Bombings in Palestine
Wayne Madsen Special to Salem-News.com

(WASHINGTON D.C.) - Note from Publisher: In an effort to assist our government in keeping information "transparent", we are publishing this important article by Wayne Madsen, on the father of Rahm Emanuel. You won't find his bio on wikipedia, or any where else easily accessed. It has been deleted.

Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel held a top position in our country's leadership and his example of ethics and integrity is of the highest importance. This is not diminished regardless of his aspirations to leave the national spotlight and become the mayor of Chicago.

But, it seems, some secrets must just be harder to share. This revealing article will leave you with a better understanding of why no one wants to talk about Benjamin Emanuel. And why they should.
- Bonnie King

A well-placed British source informed WMR that Rahm Emanuel's father, Benjamin Emanuel, specialized in the terrorist bombings of buses carrying British troops and policemen during the British Mandate in Palestine.

British MI-6 files contain information on the elder Emanuel's participation in the terrorist activities of Irgun Zvai Leumi, a Jewish terrorist organization that targeted British forces, UN officials, and Palestinian Arabs in the lead up to Israeli independence in 1948.

Benjamin Emanuel, a Jew from Russia whose real name was Ezekiel Auerbach, was arrested by British police for terrorist activities in the months prior to Israeli independence. Many of the British policemen killed by Emanuel and his Irgun colleagues between 1947 and 1948 had been transferred to Palestine upon Indian and Pakistani independence in 1947. Irgun saw the increase of British policemen from the Indian subcontinent as a major threat.

The Jewish terrorist murders of British troops and policemen resulted in massive anti-Jewish riots in London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester, and Cardiff in 1947. In 1946, Emanuel's Irgun bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, killing 91 people, including 28 British soldiers and policemen.

British intelligence also believed that Benjamin Emanuel may have been related to Vladimir Jabotinsky, a Russian Jew from Odessa who founded Irgun. Jabotinksy, who was an admirer of Benito Mussolini and who secretly negotiated for the expatriation of Jews to Palestine with the Nazi government in Germany and Admiral Miklos Horthy's pro-Nazi regime in Hungary, died of a heart attack in New York in 1940.

Wikipedia deleted Benjamin Emanuel's entry in 2008*, shortly after Rahm Emanuel was designated as President Obama's chief of staff. Wikipedia is a favorite device for the perception management goals of Dr. Cass Sunstein, Obama's director of the White House Office of Regulatory Affairs.

With a record of terrorist acts contained in his MI-6 files, Benjamin Emanuel was permitted by U.S. authorities to emigrate to Chicago from Israel in the 1950s, becoming a citizen. Rahm Emanuel was born in 1959.

What is An Israeli Doing at The NDEA?Freedom Editor Spoke With Israeli Born Danny Shinn
By A State House Insider

Via
Banjul, The Gambia—Pa, an Israeli Jew called Danny Shinn has become very active in the operations of the NDEA. "Danny" as he is popularly known is widely rumored in the intelligence community to be the Israeli spy agency Mossad's representative in The Gambia. Danny has penetrated The Gambia's security establishment by providing allowances to security officials who have been fired. For example, both Benedict, Kunji, and even Lang Tombong all received allowances something totaling 30,000 dalasi per month whilst they were unemployed.

Danny was actually detained at the NDEA last December as he was suspected to be the source of the leak to the CIA that resulted in the Iranian arms being intercepted in Lagos. Danny has however turned the situation around to the point that he now is providing some of our intelligence officers such as Yusupha Jatta and others written questions that are to be used in interrogations. He is also providing them tips he learnt from torture of Palestinians to be applied to Gambian detainees. He is in regular contact, from his mobile (xxxxxx withheld) with his assets such as Benedict, Kunji, and Yusupha.

The level of corruption and abuse of power at the NDEA is the worst our country has ever seen. Even previously honest Benedict has been so corrupted that one has to now believe the adage "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Benedict for example, has installed one of his mistresses in a villa at the Taf Estate that was seized illegally from a drug suspect. Additionally, he awarded Danny a contract to supply CCTV to the new NDEA offices without any bid or adherence to GPPA regulations. It is unclear to me whether Danny is here as part of a secret agreement with the Israeli government or if it is just because of Ben.

Danny's cover is that he owns a company that supplies military hardware and surveillance equipment in The Gambia.

Editors note: The Freedom Newspaper was able to reach Mr. Danny Shinn on the cellular phone number provided to us by our source. The Israel born native first demanded to know who the caller was, and our Editor identified himself to him. Mr. Danny then enquired how we managed to get his cell number, and we told him that as journalists, we had access to multiple sources—thus allaying his curiosity.

We demanded his reaction to the report mentioned above: his ties with the NDEA, him training NDEA officers, his alleged affiliation with the Israel Mossad Intelligence outfit, the CCTV contract he reached with the NDEA, and the alleged monies given to former sacked security officers, such as Lang Tombong Tamba, Ben Jammeh, and Kunji, Mr. Shinn rejected the report—saying don’t make me laugh. He demanded to know what media organization our Editor worked for, and he was told the Freedom Newspaper. It took him few seconds to figure out the Freedom newspaper as a new organization. But he finally affirmed with an exclamation—remarking “ oh Freedom, Freedom.”

“What newspaper are you representing? Or the Freedom, yes, yes, Okay…” signaling that he is aware of a newspaper called the Freedom Newspaper. Mr. Shinn would also not discuss his alleged detention by the NDEA back in December of 2009, following the interception of the Iranian arms destined for President Jammeh’s Kanilai Farm. He will also not explain what he was doing in The Gambia. He merely said that he was a freeman, otherwise he wouldn’t be talking to us on the phone. But was told that the alleged detention took place in December of 2009, but Danny wouldn’t elaborate on the matter.

When asked about the CCTV contract deal he allegedly signed with the NDEA, and the supplying of military hardware to the Government of The Gambia, Mr. Shinn hung up the phone. This particular query never went down well with him. He hung up the phone without notifying us. That ends our phone conversation with Mr. Shinn.

9/11 And Faith-based Pre-Enlightenment ‘Knowledge.’Interrogating the Arizona Killings from a Safe Distance
By Richard Falk

"Information Clearing House" January 11, 2011 -- -- I spent a year in Sweden a few years after the assassination of Olaf Palme in 1986, the controversial former prime minister of the country who at the time of his death was serving as a member of the Swedish cabinet. He was assassinated while walking with his wife back to his apartment in the historic part of the city after attending a nearby movie. It was a shocking event in a Sweden that had prided itself on moderateness in politics and the avoidance of involvement in the wars of the twentieth century. A local drifter, with a history of alcoholism, was charged and convicted of the crime, but many doubts persisted, including on the part of Ms. Palme who analogized her situation to that of Coretta King who never believed the official version of her martyred husband’s death.

I had a particular interest in this national traumatic event as my reason for being in Sweden was a result of an invitation to be the Olaf Palme Professor, a rotating academic post given each year to a foreign scholar, established by the Swedish Parliament as a memorial to their former leader. (after the Social Democratic Party lost political control in Sweden this professorship was promptly defunded, partly because Palme was unloved by conservatives and partly because of a neoliberal dislike for public support of such activities)

In the course of my year traveling around Sweden I often asked those whom I met what was their view of the assassination, and what I discovered was that the responses told me more about them than it did about the public event. Some thought it was a dissident faction in the Swedish security forces long angered by Palme’s neutralist policies, some believed it was resentment caused by Palme’s alleged engineering of Swedish arms sales to both sides in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, some believed it was the CIA in revenge for Palme’s neutralism during the Cold War, some believed it could have criminals in the pay of business tycoons tired of paying high taxes needed to maintain the Swedish maximalist version of a welfare state, and there were other theories as well. What was common to all of these explanations was the lack of evidence that might connect the dots. What people believed happened flowed from their worldview rather than the facts of the event—a distrust of the state, especially its secret operations, or a strong conviction that special interests hidden from view were behind prominent public events of this character.

In a way, this process of reflection is natural, even inevitable, but it leads to faulty conclusions. We tend to process information against the background of our general worldview and understanding, and we do this all the time as an efficient way of coping with the complexity of the world combined with our lack of time or inclination to reach conclusions by independent investigation. The problem arises when we confuse this means of interpreting our experience with an effort to provide an explanation of a contested public event. There are, to be sure, conspiracies that promote unacknowledged goals, and enjoy the benefit of government protection. We don’t require WikiLeaks to remind us not to trust governments, even our own, and others that seem in most respects to be democratic and law-abiding. And we also by now should know that governments (ab)use their authority to treat awkward knowledge as a matter of state secrets, and criminalize those who are brave enough to believe that the citizenry needs to know the crimes that their government is committing with their trust and their tax dollars.

The arguments swirling around the 9/11 attacks are emblematic of these issues. What fuels suspicions of conspiracy is the reluctance to address the sort of awkward gaps and contradictions in the official explanations that David Ray Griffin(and other devoted scholars of high integrity) have been documenting in book after book ever since his authoritative The New Pearl Harbor in 2004 (updated in 2008). What may be more distressing than the apparent cover up is the eerie silence of the mainstream media, unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an al Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials. Is this silence a manifestation of fear or cooption, or part of an equally disturbing filter of self-censorship? Whatever it is, the result is the withering away of a participatory citizenry and the erosion of legitimate constitutional government. The forms persist, but the content is missing.

This brings me to the Arizona shootings, victimizing both persons apparently targeted for their political views and random people who happened to be there for one reason or another, innocently paying their respects to a congresswoman meeting constituents outside a Tucson supermarket. As with the Palme assassination, the most insistent immediate responses come from the opposite ends of the political spectrum, both proceeding on presuppositions rather than awaiting evidence.

On one side are those who say that right-wing hate speech and affection for guns were clearly responsible, while Tea Party ultra-conservatives and their friends reaffirm their rights of free speech, denying that there is any connection between denouncing their adversaries in the political process and the violent acts of a deranged individual seemingly acting on his own. If we want to be responsible in our assessments, we must restrain our political predispositions, and get the evidence. Let us remember that what seems most disturbing about the 9/11 controversy is the widespread aversion by government and media to the evidence that suggests, at the very least, the need for an independent investigation that proceeds with no holds barred.

Such an investigation would contrast with the official ‘9/11 Commission’ that proceeded with most holds barred. What has been already disturbing about the Arizona incident are these rival rushes to judgment without bothering with evidence. Such public irresponsibility polarizes political discourse, making conversation and serious debate irrelevant.

There is one more issue raised, with typical candor and innocence, by the filmmaker, Michael Moore. If a Muslim group has published a list of twenty political leaders in this country, and put crosshairs of a gun behind their pictures, is there any doubt that the Arizona events would be treated as the work of a terrorist,, and the group that had pre-identified such targets would be immediately outlawed as a terrorist organization. Many of us, myself included, fervently hoped, upon hearing the news of the shootings, that the perpetrator of this violence was neither a Muslim nor a Hispanic, especially an illegal immigrant. Why? Because we justly feared the kind of horrifying backlash that would have been probably generated by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin, and their legion of allies. Now that the apparent perpetrator is a young white American, the talk from the hate mongers, agains without bothering with evidence, is of mental disorder and sociopathology. This is faith-based pre-Enlightenment ‘knowledge.’

What must we learn from all of this? Don’t connect dots without evidence. Don’t turn away as soon as the words ‘conspiracy theory’ are uttered, especially if the evidence does point away from what the power-wielders want us to believe. Don’t link individual wrongdoing, however horrific, to wider religious and ethnic identities. We will perish as a species if we don’t learn soon to live together better on our beautiful, globalizing, and imperiled planet.

Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

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Connecting the dots between different events that go unreported (or under-reported), as a whole, in our mainstream media. Come learn what many do not know, but what many are waking up to. Knowledge is power.